Meet Vanessa Correa! Vanessa is new to Philadelphia, and a proud AMA Member!
Tell us about your role — what you do, and what does a typical day look like for you?
I am the only marketing leader at the company who is working on both strengthening our employer brand and ensuring our recruitment marketing delivers results. I just started my role on April 15, so for now I spend the majority of my time with Talent Acquisition experts across all lines of business to get the intel I need. As time goes by I will spend more time with other marketing and communications leads so all employees can customize the brand expression to their external audiences while remaining consistent in our brand identity.
What’s a common misconception people have about your job or about marketing in your industry?
I think capital B brand always sounds important and sexy, but Employer Brand can be something that’s hard for current employees to participate in. Because they’re overly familiar with the company and are not job searching it can be hard to get employees to see why employer brand matters, how their embodying the brand benefits them and is also an important component of the company being successful — specific to my current role, our brand as an employer is very important for us to be able to compete for the talent we need to meet top-line business goals.
What’s one marketing tool, habit, or framework you rely on more than anything else right now?
The years have gone by (I’ve done marketing for 15) and I still see companies going ham on the “what” or the “how,” with no clear “why”. My framework is always to take a step back to build the foundation of “why” for the “what” and “how” to stand firm, so the strategy stays effective and delivers results that actually matter past vanity metrics. Millions of followers, impressions, clicks, podcast listens, newsletter subscribers etc. don’t necessarily mean you’re succeeding at providing business value.
What’s the best book you’ve read recently?
AQ (Agility Quotient) by Liz Tran — IT’S A MUST READ. She demonstrates so simply why IQ and EQ are not enough for the times we are living in — times of constant change. She helps you identify your strengths and weaknesses when it comes to your relationship with change and gives you practical tools to grow your muscles, especially when it comes to career change and navigating change at work/with your team.
What are you looking forward to the most for the industry over the next year?
That we find a way for AI to make us bionic, not irrelevant, and we all hold our employers responsible to develop it ethically.
What’s the best piece of career advice you’ve ever received?
Decide what is the last job title you ever want to have, and work your way backward from there. Plan your steps to gain all the skills and experience you will need in your toolbox to be able to get that last title, succeed in that last role, and end your career on a high note.
What advice would you give to the next generation of marketing leaders?
A lot of our discipline focuses on highlighting wins, because marketing constantly has to showcase its value, but the best thing they can do is learn from historic marketing fails. Spend time reading up on case studies of the worst marketing decisions ever made, epically bad choices that crashed and burned. You’ll learn from others’ mistakes and more importantly you will start to see patterns. The details change, but the failures in discernment are usually the same.
When you unplug from work, where are you most likely to be in Philadelphia?
Chasing murals; I think it’s WILD and also amazing and one of my favorite things about this city that Philadelphia has more murals than any other city in the world. I have a second Instagram account just to post images of the city’s beautiful architecture and murals.
What’s a mistake you made early on in your career?
In high school and while doing my Bachelors, I didn’t get any guidance from my parents or my family on how the world works, and I also didn’t do my research and find out on my own. I just went with what I was good at and made work decisions based on that in my early 20s. I had a narrow view and missed all the different directions I could go in with the same set of strong skills. So I had planned an entire career in publishing, but when I completed my Masters in Publishing was when I took my first marketing class and had to change my whole plan because I love marketing in a way that I didn’t feel about publishing.
What’s one benefit of being an AMA Philadelphia member that you enjoy?
I enjoy that there’s a chapter in basically every major metro. I move a lot and travel a lot, and it’s nice that no matter where I go, I know where my people are. It’s easy to find them and connect with them thanks to AMA. Now that I’ve joined Aramark this will be my first time ever living in Philadelphia, so I am really looking forward to making new friends and expanding my professional network.